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Effect of Annealing on the Structural, Mechanical andTribological Properties of Electroplated Cu Thin Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2011

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Abstract

The increasing demand for faster and more reliable integrated circuits (ICs)has promoted the integration of Copper-based metallization. Electroplated Cufilms demonstrate a microstructural transition at room temperature, known asself annealing. In this paper we intend to investigate the annealingbehavior of electroplated Cu films grown on a seed Cu layer on top of thebarrier layers over a single crystal silicon substrate. All the samples wereundergone through a multistep annealing process. Grazing incident x-raydiffraction pattern shows stronger x-ray reflections from Cu (111) and (220)planes but weaker reflections from (200), (311) and (222) planes in all theelectroplated Cu samples. Transmission electron microscopy was performed onthe cross section of the samples and the diffraction pattern showed thecrystalline behavior of both seed layer and electroplated Cu.Nanoindentation was performed on all the samples using the continuousstiffness measurement (CSM) technique and it was found that the elasticmodulus varies from 110 to 130 GPa while the hardness varies from 1 to 1.6GPa depending on the annealing conditions. The tribological properties ofall the copper films were also measured using the Bench Top CMP tester.Subsequently, Nanoindentation was performed on the samples after polishingthe top surface in order to investigate the work hardening and an increasein hardness and modulus was observed. Finite Element Modeling was performedin order to investigate the stress behavior during nanoindentation.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2004

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